Herbed Chicken & Dumplings

After a freakishly warm beginning to winter in Buffalo, it has been really cold out the past couple days. On top of that, the heating vent in my office at work has been messed up and actually blowing cold air on me all day (finally got fixed today – phew!). Needless to say, by the time I got home from work tonight I was looking for a nice, hot bowl of comfort food to warm me up from the inside out. This dish absolutely did the trick. The dumplings are big, soft and puffy, there is a ton of chicken in each serving and the fresh herbs give this dish so much flavor. I usually save a lot of points for dinner (for those who don’t know, I follow the Weight Watchers Points Plus plan), but after one bowl of this I was stuffed with a few points to spare! Don’t worry, I spent them wisely (on wine). This really is the ideal winter comfort food, and it’s one your body can feel good about!

Directions:

In a large stock pot or Dutch oven, bring 1 ½ teaspoons of oil over medium heat. When the oil is heated, add the chicken breasts to the pot in a single layer. Lightly season with salt and pepper. Let the chicken cook, flipping once, until the outsides are browned and the center is almost or just cooked through. Remove chicken to a plate and set aside.

Add the remaining 1 ½ teaspoons of oil to the pot and add the onions, carrots and leeks. Allow the vegetables to cook until softened, about 7 minutes. Stir the flour into the vegetables until coated. Add the wine, broth, milk, thyme and bay leaf. Shred chicken breasts into small pieces (or chop) and add the chicken to the pot as well. Stir to combine and reduce heat to medium-low. Cover the pot and simmer for 30 minutes. After the 30 minutes, uncover and add the tarragon, salt & pepper.

While the stew is simmering, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt for the dumplings in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, combine the milk and butter and microwave until just warmed (butter should be just melted), 1-2 minutes. Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture in the large bowl and stir together until thoroughly combined. Mix in the tarragon, parsley and chives.

When the stew is done cooking, drop spoonfuls of the dumpling dough into the pot forming 16 large dumplings (or 24 smaller dumplings if you prefer). Reduce the heat to low and cover the pot. Cook for 15-18 minutes until the dumplings puff up and double in size. Dunk dumplings to coat with the stew and serve.

Weight Watchers SmartPoints:8 per serving (SP calculated using the recipe builder on weightwatchers.com)

Just made this, can’t wait for the family to get home, it’s delicious! I do have one question. When you said “drop spoonfuls”, my dumpling batter was very dry. I really had to grab pieces and sort of roll them together. Is that going to make them too hard? Should I have used my hands to mix it all together better? Wasn’t sure how much handling was going to ruin them but I would describe the mix as very dry and clumpy, not really spoonable.

Hm, I have no idea what could have happened – my dumpling batter wasn’t dry at all! It was actually kinda sticky, but beyond that, really easy to work with. Did you melt the butter in the milk and add both together? I hope they still taste good!

Yup, that’s exactly what I did. But it was very dry. They taste a little floury but they’re good. The “gravy” is delicious. Just wish I knew what it was. Hopefully some more people will post and I’ll figure it out. Thanks!

We did one modification, we boiled and shredded the chicken separately and then added it in to simmer with the rest of the strew. It was very delicious! The only thing I think that would make it better would be if it was more soupy. Next time, I think we will try adding a bit more chicken broth. 🙂 Thanks for all the great recipes!